Thursday, 28 November 2013

Meet Hermogenes, the host of 620 couch surfers in 547 days.

Hermogenes, 34, surrounded by his two boys Ricardo and Sebastián, and by their friend Alysa.

I arrived
in Cusco, Peru around 7 pm, after a 22-hour bus ride.

Exhausted,
I didn’t bother to barter the price for the taxi ride. I paid the ten soles
requested by the taxi driver, even though my couch surfing host had told me
beforehand to pay a maximum of six soles (“For six soles”, the driver told me,
“I can drive you to the Plaza de Armas. But then you’ll have to walk ten
blocks. It’s up to you.”).

I arrived at the given address, surprised
to have the door opened to me by two very young-looking boys. The eldest, who
appeared to be about eight years old, interrogated me in Spanish.

-Who are you looking for?

-Hum, Hermogenes?

-OK yes this is the place, please
come in. Sorry about the mess, we just moved in a few days ago.

The place wasn’t messy, but it was
small. I scanned the single room: one double bed, one bunk bed, one table, two
chairs, and a two-feet wide gas stove (although it also contained an oven, the
latter was out-of-use because a rat had found refuge there once, and had
unfortunately been cooked while the oven was heating up, the eight-year old had
confided. So there’s lots of bacteria in there now, he concluded).

Hermogenes's home: a single room with two beds, a table, a gas oven, and a non-functional refrigerator

Sebastián was eight years old, and
Ricardo was three. Both were clearly used to travelers crashing at their place
for a night or two.

“Here is your mattress”, said
Sebastián while taking out a thin blue camping mat. “Sorry there are stains on
it. It’s because lots of other people
slept on it. My Dad should be coming home soon from work. If you’re thirsty, we
have water already boiled”.

Wow, I thought. I can’t wait to meet
the man who raised these unusually well-behaved children.

Hermogenes arrived around 8:30 pm.
While cooking some dinner, he explained to me their living situation.

“We actually just moved into this
place three days ago. We used to live down the street, in a much bigger place. Then,
I could host many couch surfers at a time. Three, four, even five. Here, I can only take one or two”.

I was apparently standing face to
the male version of Mother Theresa.

“You see”, he continued, “The rent
at the other place was $200 per month. Here, it’s only $50. This way, I can
send Sebastián to private school.”.

The cost of sending him to private
school is 250 soles ($92) per month. But this expense lags far behind the expenditures
for food, at 900 soles ($330) per month.

And yet, despite this modest way of
living, Hermogenes hosted 620 couch surfers over the last year-and-a-half.

Founded in 2004, the website Couchsurfing
provides a platform for its members to either “surf” on couches in the city
they are traveling to, or to receive “surfers” in their home for a few nights. In 2012, the website counted 3.6 million
members. One year later, this number had reached 6 million, connecting members
in 100 000 different cities worldwide. A
system of references (positive, negative, or neutral) allows members to gauge
the reliability of the surfer they will potentially host, or of the host whose
couch they may surf on.

With 146 positive references on
Hermogenes’s account (not all surfers left references), I had nothing to fear as
a single woman surfing at a man’s house.

The only obligation a Couchsurfing
host is bound by upon acceptance of a surfer is to provide him or her with a
couch to surf on. Nonetheless, Hermogenes
always outdoes this criteria, offering a key to his guests for them to have
unlimited access to the house, as well as sharing breakfast, and even sometimes
dinner with them.

The motivating force behind his
active participation in Couchsurfing is based on the desire to learn about and
to build a connection with other people, says Hermogenes: “I do it for the friendships. For the sake of sharing. I learn many things
thanks to my guests: which types of people are most appreciative of what you
give them, which ones need more commodities, etc.”.

One of the many plazas in the city of Cusco, where Hermogenes lives.

Hermogenes currently works in the
administrative branch of a tourism agency; but this was not always the case, he
tells me: “The kids’mother and I used to
own a hotel in the historic center. We both spent over $22 000 to buy and
renovate it. I was quite invested in it. I spent sleepless nights driving to
the airport at night to attract potential clients to our hotel. When the mother
and I separated, I left her the hotel so that she would have a source of
revenue. We got back together a year later. I was expecting to resume managing
the hotel with her, but she had sold it without telling me. I had to start
again at zero. ”. His facial expression was devoid of
any trace of rancor. It only revealed a sense of knowledge that had been gained
the hard way.

Hermogenes blows on a small fire in a ceramic bowl, in preparation for a ceremony of the reading of coca leaves. Proud of his Inca roots, Hermogenes considers himself a mystic.

Despite this unfortunate experience,
Hermogenes still hopes to build another hotel in the future, near the new
international airport in Cusco that will be built in the coming years.

Another dream of his is to one day
become the mayor of Chinchero, his home town. “I think I have good chances. I
am the only person from my town who has attended a private university.”.

Ultimately, Hermogenes’s aspirations
reach beyond this: “The truth is, I would eventually like to participate in the
National Congress of Peru. But all of this is down the road. I have two boys to
look after for the next few years.”.

Hermogenes is one of the most
inspiring people I have come across in my lifetime. Through living and interacting with him for the
eleven days I was surfing at his place, I gradually gained the belief that
anything is possible; and that serious downfalls happen even to the best of us –
but with the right attitude, they will always be overcome.